A German TV presenter has claimed he doctored footage showing the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, giving the middle-finger to Germany. It comes after a scandal, in which the Greek politician denied the video is authentic.

The footage was shown on
Sunday, at a weekly talk show on the German ARD channel, hosted
by Günther Jauch. The Greek minister, who was a guest on the
show, denied the actions depicted in it.

Varoufakis claimed the video had been doctored, and that he had
“never given the finger ever.”

Jan Böhmermann, host of the satirical programme Neo Magazin
Royale on public broadcaster ZDF, confessed in a video posted on
YouTube on Wednesday.

"Dear Günther Jauch, dear ARD, dear editors of ‘Bild’, you
must now all be very strong," Böhmermann can’t help laughing
at his own words, as he starts to reveal what he did.

“Sorry, Mr Varoufakis, we won’t do it again,” Böhmermann
added, providing the details on how the video had been faked.

The team first shot the gesture separately in the studio, and
then added the hand using computer graphics, he claimed. Shadows
were added to make it more real.

Böhmermann explained their move, too.

“Dear editorial staff of Günther Jauch, Yanis Varoufakis is
wrong, you didn’t falsify the footage. You simply took it out of
context, and gave it the runaround, so that the average Germans
could pursue their passion of being angered,” he said in a
video statement.

“That’s what you did. And the rest is our effort,”
Böhmermann added, smiling.

On Monday, the show, which has millions of viewers, stated that
it had seen “no indication whatsoever of manipulation or
falsification in the video shown during the live show,” the
Guardian reports.

The video showed Varoufakis in 2013, before his appointment as
finance minister, speaking at a lecture in the Croatian capital
of Zagreb. In particular, Varoufakis said that Greece should have
defaulted five years ago rather than accept a multi-billion euro
loan.

During the speech, Varoufakis says “stick the finger to
Germany,” and seems to be gesturing rudely.

Mr Varoufakis praised the satirical host for mocking the scandal,
after the comedian published the footage revealing how the
‘middle-finger’ video had been doctored by his team.

“Humor, satire, and
self-deprecation are great solvents of blind nationalism. We
politicians need you badly,” Varoufakis wrote on
Twitter.